1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the art of applying fasteners and specifically to apparatus for attaching tags to articles such as merchandise by means of fasteners.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
A commercially successful tag attacher is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,650,452 to Eugene W. Finke, granted Mar. 21, 1972. That tag attacher discloses a one-piece ratchet wheel and feed wheel. A one-piece spring device has a pair of spring fingers. One spring finger urges a pawl into contact with the ratchet wheel and the other spring finger contacts the toothed feed wheel and acts as a detent or anti-back up device. This tag attacher has also been made using posts molded integrally with one body section to receive headed screws passing through the other body section.
The other devices disclosing drive pawls and detent members are U.S. Pat. No. 3,103,666 to Arnold R. Bone, granted Sept. 17, 1963 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,759,435 to Arnold R. Bone, granted Sept. 18, 1973. These patents disclose a means for disengaging the pawl from the feed wheel to facilitate release and removal of a fastener assembly.
Another prior art tag attacher contains a detent pawl which is released by camming action, and it contains a reciprocable pawl having a spring finger which contacts a toothed feed wheel to advance its feed wheel and in turn to advance a fastener assembly.